


Pride and Persuasion

by bookishandbossy



Series: Austenland AU [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Austenland AU, F/M, First Dates, Fluff, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three weeks and one very memorable kiss later, Jemma Simmons has left Austenland for good.  However, she's about to see the most memorable part of it again: Leo Fitz, the historian and erstwhile gentleman who she fell for when she was there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pride and Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohfiitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohfiitz/gifts).



> Written for a timestamp fic giveaway and follower celebration over on Tumblr. (And should have been done about two weeks ago, but I was struck with a severe case of writers' block.)
> 
> The first line is loosely based on the opening line of _Emma_ by Jane Austen.

Jemma Simmons, pretty, clever, and well on her way to becoming rich, with a surprisingly spacious London apartment and a fiercely loyal roommate, seemed to have nearly everything that she could desire and to be untroubled by the same petty worries that consumed her friends and workmates. Except, of course, her singularly bad luck with first dates.

“Something is going to happen, Skye. I just know it,” Jemma moaned, her words muffled by the solid wood of the table she was currently resting her head against. “Something always happens.”

“No, it doesn't. What about what's-his-name, the one with the muscles? Though that doesn't really narrow down the field, does it?” Skye mused. 

“He liked to go out and hunt small animals on the weekend. Three hundred years of inbred British aristocracy...” Jemma shuddered. It had been a blind date organized by one of her colleagues at the lab, who'd seen the guy's title and neglected to find out anything about his personality. “But that wasn't even the worst one.”

“I know,” Skye said fondly. “I remember Severe Peanut Allergy Man, Minor Natural Disaster Guy, and Dreaded Love Triangle Dude of Doom. It's like a greatest-hits collection of cocktail party stories.” Jemma just let out another moan and buried her head in her hands until she had a close-up view of the wood grain of the table. “ _But_ that's not what's going to happen today, because you and Professor Leopold Fitz happen to be the cutest thing since that baby panda video I showed you two weeks ago. Trip agrees with me too.”

“Trip?” Jemma asked, confused.

“Formerly Captain Triplett. We've been talking since we left Austenland,” Skye said casually. “He took me out to dinner last weekend and then we went back to his apartment and marathoned spy movies till two in the morning. He even let me complain about how bad the hacking was.”

“Are the spy movies meant to be a euphemism?”

“No. He didn't even make a move past first base. I guess he wants to take it slow—Austenland must have rubbed off on him.” Skye shrugged, but Jemma could spot the tiny smug smile hovering around the edges of her mouth, the one that brought out the dimples sunk deep into her cheeks and that she hadn't spotted since Skye's last serious relationship had ended in literal flames. 

“You like him. You really like him,” Jemma said slowly, then raised her head to lean across the table and grab both of Skye's hands in hers. “Are you sure that you don't want to bring him along on my date with Fitz? We could double date—it would be fun!”

“Nope.” Skye shook her head emphatically. “I'm not letting your bad first date karma rub off on me. Not that I think it really exists,” Skye added quickly, as a panicked look began to creep back over Jemma's face. “Your first date bad luck is completely nonexistent and everything is going to be great, okay?” Jemma mumbled her agreement. “Now are you going to let me go back to sleep?”

“The sun's up!” Jemma protested.

“And it's still seven in the morning. Stop worrying, Jem,” Skye repeated. “Everything is going to be fine.” And with that, Skye picked up her pillow from the kitchen table and shuffled back to bed, leaving Jemma with an entire pot of tea and a long list of emergency scenarios that she hadn't even gotten to run through. Not that she really thought she needed to prepare for an alien invasion but she hadn't spent any time in the real world with Fitz and she wasn't quite sure how they'd work when they weren't laced into Austenian garb and complaining about it. What if they ran out of things to talk about? What if he insisted on doing something silly like waiting in the disgustingly long line to ride the London Eye? What if they had an argument? What if—Jemma sighed, reached for her tablet, and began researching the types of aliens most likely to land on Earth.

 

“Is this the kind of situation that requires a suit?” Fitz asked, phone pressed to one ear and the contents of his wardrobe spread out across his floor. “Do things have to match?”

“You're not going to prom, man,” Trip said. “Just find a nice button-down shirt and some pants that fit right. And shoes.”

“I'm not going to forget shoes,” Fitz huffed. Knowing his luck, he'd probably end up forgetting something important like his train ticket 

“Hunter did, that time he had to do the shirtless mid-morning hedge clipping. Probably scarred all the clients for life when he dropped the clippers on his foot and started cursing,” Trip said smugly.

“That was three years ago,” Hunter shouted from his end of the line. They'd patched him in on a conference call at his insistence, not because they intended on actually listening to any of his advice. (On the last day at Austenland, he and Bobbi had had a screaming, no holds barred fight that ended in her mutilating his prize hedge and storming off in a rage.) “But yeah, mate, you might wear to want shoes.”

“I was _planning_ on wearing shoes.” Fitz frowned at his blue button-down: was that a barbecue sauce or ink stain on the pocket? Better find another one in the drift of clothing currently carpeting his floor. He'd looked so ridiculous in the Regency clothing Jemma had seen him in earlier, that anything had to be an improvement on that. Didn't it?

When Fitz finally boarded his ten o'clock train, he was wearing a freshly ironed plaid shirt and a haphazardly knotted tie, clutching a bouquet of flowers in one hand, and seriously contemplating what would happen if an alien invasion interrupted his first date with Jemma Simmons. Maybe he could impress her with his knowledge of spaceship systems or alien species? (Never mind that most of it had been acquired from _Doctor Who_.) Not that he thought that was going to happen, he just...he just wanted this to go well more badly than he had wanted anything in quite a long time. Wanted her, sharp tongue and soft eyes and all, with a fierceness that nearly made him ache. Wanted Saturday night dates and Sunday morning breakfasts and everything that came in between.

And when he finally met her at the station, the sight of her hit him straight in the heart. She looked even prettier than he remembered her being, wearing a blue dress and caught in a rare beam of London sunlight. “Jemma,” he finally managed, after his tongue had unstuck itself from the roof of his mouth. “It's, er, it's really good to see you.”

“You too,” she said and slipped her hand through his.

Well, Jemma thought, there was that question answered. Fitz looked even better in everyday clothes than he had in Regency ones and she'd just grabbed his hand without even asking him about it and what if he didn't want her to do it and—Fitz squeezed her hand tightly and Jemma let herself breathe. “How have you been? Since your dramatic exit from Austenland, I mean?” she asked.

“Pretty well, actually. My aunt was furious when I quit, but then my mum called her and she shut right up. Everyone's scared of my mum,” Fitz said proudly. “I've had loads of time for my research too, since getting back to Oxford.”

“What's it on? I read your book,” she added quickly. “By the way. Just to make sure that it was real. Not that I didn't think you were pretending to be a professor but I—it was really good. Very thoroughly researched and analyzed, and much more readable than most academic treatises are.”

“Really? I didn't even know you could still find a copy,” Fitz said sheepishly. “It didn't exactly race up the bestseller lists.”

“It wasn't difficult.” She'd had to special order a copy from the Oxford University Press, but she wasn't about to tell him that. “I actually had some questions about your research methods, if you don't mind?”

“All right,” Fitz said, a huge smile spreading across his face. “But you have to tell me all about what you do afterward, because I'm pretty sure it's brilliant.” People had been telling Jemma Simmons that she was brilliant all her life and she knew every measurement of just how brilliant she was inside and out. But somehow, when Fitz said it like it was a basic fact of life, as established as the earth going around the sun, it felt like she was hearing it for the very first time. And maybe, for the very first time, she was hearing it from someone just as brilliant as she was. 

She'd always been mildly interested in history, in a recreationally academic sort of way, but Fitz made it sound beyond fascinating. His three-day quest for a letter from 1807 in the Oxford archives, his long-standing feud with a colleague conducted by way of a series of scathing articles, his near-patented three-step method for teaching undergraduates about the Napoleonic wars...he clearly loved every last bit of his work and Jemma loved seeing the way that his face lit up when he talked about it. 

Normally, the less Jemma knew about her dates, the better, whether it was the ex-girlfriend they just couldn't forget, the job selling insurance that they thought was beyond fascinating, or the fact that they thought the whole premise of Doctor Who was just silly. But with Fitz, she couldn't help wanting to know more. Maybe it was because whenever she asked him a question, she actually ended up liking the answer. In a world where so few things managed to hold her attention on a permanent basis, he was _interesting_. And he seemed to think she was interesting too. 

When she went on a ten-minute, extremely detailed tangent about her research, his eyes didn't even glaze over as he followed along. When she mentioned that she loved reading mysteries, he asked her for recommendations. When she told the story of how she'd ended up rooming with Skye, he shared all the little bits of gossip about Skye and Trip that he'd gleaned from phone conversations. He matched her word for word and move for move and Jemma could hardly decide whether she wanted to talk to him or kiss him more.

Finally, after a breakfast of donuts and hot tea at Borough Market, after a long walk along the South Bank and a near run-in with a living statue in front of the Tate, after wandering through half the bookshops in Bloomsbury and all of the British Museum, and after a lunch of Dutch pancakes as large as Fitz's face, she made up her mind. As much as she liked talking to him, she'd like to kiss him even more. So she did, stretching up on the tips of her toes and pressing her mouth to his, right in the middle of the street.

She caught him entirely by surprise and Jemma couldn't help feeling a small sense of satisfaction at how he gasped against her mouth before he slid an arm around her waist and relaxed into the kiss. Their first kiss at the train station had been all heat and rush but this one was slow and sweet, as Fitz carefully fitted his mouth to hers and cupped her face with one hand. They kissed like they had nothing else in the world to do and for a minute, Jemma forgot that she had anything else in the world to do. There was just Fitz, his hands and his mouth and, when she finally, reluctantly pulled away, his impossibly wide, brilliant smile. 

“You wanted to kiss me again,” he said, still sounding somewhat dazed.

“Yes, I did.” Jemma was probably grinning like a lunatic too but she didn't even care.

“And you might even want to kiss me in the future?” he asked. “On more outings that could be classified as dates?”

“Yes, I definitely do. I'd like to go on lots and lots of outings that could be classified as dates in the future. And I'd like to have breakfast and lunch and dinner and every meal in between with you, and talk about everything we can think of and everything we can't. And right now,” Jemma took a deep breath and continued on. “I'd like to go back to my flat with you and kiss you some more. If that...if that would be all right with you?”

“I think that that—all of that—would be absolutely perfect.” Then he kissed her again. 

If they liked each other less, maybe Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons would have been able to talk about it more. But then, they understood each other perfectly anyway.


End file.
